Bangalore: Accenture today formed an alliance with Applause, a software testing tools and services provider to strengthen its capabilities and geographic reach of company’s own testing services. Company called it as a part of its Liquid workforce strategy.

With an initial focus on digital application testing, the new tie-up provides organizations with access to crowdsourcing services as part of their broader testing program, in order to push software releases and ensure more seamless customer experiences.

Under the partnership, Accenture Ventures has made a minority investment in Applause.

The testing market is exploding as the number of devices, operating systems and applications keeps growing. In addition, countries have varied security requirements, privacy laws, and other regulations, making testing requirements more complex—creating an ideal scenario to tap into the testing capabilities provided by Applause’s global, diverse crowd of testers.

The Applause crowd community features more than 250,000 experienced quality assurance testers around the world. They complement Accenture’s 35,000 testing professionals to provide an unmatched scope of testing services and geographic coverage.

Accenture is already working with Applause to test, secure and monitor digital applications for a seamless customer experience across mobile devices, desktops, kiosks, smart TVs, and wearables.

This would allow companies to access specialized crowds of testers that match the profile of their users and customers. Some 60,000 women testers in the Applause crowd can be tapped to effectively test applications for products and services specifically targeted for women.

“Crowdsourcing will supplement, not replace, traditional staffing capabilities and provide flexible access to in-demand talent that can help clients improve the end-to-end performance of their websites, mobile applications and Internet of Things devices,” said Bhaskar Ghosh, Group Chief Executive - Accenture Technology Services.

“By working with a crowdtesting leader like Applause, we will be better positioned to help our clients build a more liquid workforce that addresses the constant need for new skills, accelerates speed to market and enhances the customer experience.”

“Digital experiences today are the front door to any type of business. Applause has the know-how, communities and crowd to help companies test across multiple devices and get results very quickly. Working with Accenture, we’ll help companies test their applications in the wild on real devices and configurations, beyond the confinement of a lab. Together, we’ll be able to help deliver a truly innovative and delightful experience for customers and users,” said Doron Reuveni, Applause Founder and CEO.

“As organizations are moving toward the As-a-Service economy with the goal to achieve higher agility and to accelerate time to value, testing services have to be able to support those strategies. By blending crowdsourcing of testing talent with other innovations such as automation and artificial intelligence, organizations are able to respond to the ever increasing complexity of technology while still speeding up deployments,” commented Tom Reuner, Research VP - HfS Research.

By 2018, 80 percent of development organizations supporting digital transformation will incorporate crowdsourcing into their projects as a regular practice, according to IDC.

The Applause community is also integrated into the Accenture Omni-Channel Testing Platform, a first-of-its-kind platform that helps testers focus on improving user experiences and delivering business impact.

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As the Special Chief Secretary & IT Advisor to the Chief Minister - Govt. of Andhra Pradesh, J A Chowdary is all for chasing new growth horizons, pursuing radically different development approaches and outguessing technology trends that will shape the future.

As the Special Chief Secretary & IT Advisor to the Chief Minister - Govt. of Andhra Pradesh, J A Chowdary is all for chasing new growth horizons, pursuing radically different development approaches and outguessing technology trends that will shape the future.